Media, Reputation, Intangibles, Brands, Crisis. Based in media and social media impact and content analysis. By Francesc Pujol. A Blog of Media, Reputation and Intangibles center MRI Universidad de Navarra
Pep Guardiola left football team FC Barcelona in May 2012 after four years as coach presenting an outstanding sport performance: his team was able to win 14 out of 18 national and international championships. He gained a status of top football coach. He is admired and prestigious.
He decided to take a sabbatical year, but he would come back to training after it. The only known thing was that he will not coach again FC Barcelona and any Spanish Liga team. He was pretended by top teams in Europe. Rumours were sustained about his choice since he provisionally retired.
Then, Bayern Munich announced by 16 January 2013 that they will count with Pep Guardiola as trainer for season 2013/14 to 2015/16, as current German team coach Jupp Heynckes retires at the end of this season.
This was the announcement in Twitter.
Perfekt!
PEP GUARDIOLA (41) ab Juli bis 2016 neuer Trainer des FC Bayern! /
Heynckes beendet zum Saisonende seine Karriere. ^M.Hörwick— FC Bayern München (@FCBayern) January 16, 2013
Jupp #Heynckes will finish his successful career by the end of this season. Pep #Guardiola will take over as FC Bayern head coach in July.— FC Bayern München (@FCBayern) January 16, 2013
We will present in this post some metrics about the impact this decision has provoked in the social media.
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Reaction in the social media: Twitter and Facebook
First we show the dynamics of the number of retweets RT received by the three tweets anouncing Pep Guardiola as new Bayern¡s coach in German, English and Spanish.
First message wa published by 4:48 pm CET. By 5:30 pm they had more than 15,000 RT. 20,000 mark was reached before 7:30pm. By 12pm they count with more than 21,600 RT.
As for reaction in Facebook, we have chosen to monitor the number of likes and comments to the post announcing the hiring both in German and English.
It reached almost 8,000 likes by 5:30 pm. More than 10,000 by 6.30 pm. By 12 pm it count with slighly more than 16,000.
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We compare in the following figure the dynamics of reaction followed in Twitter and Facebook. Here we estimate the share of total tweets published every 30 minutes.
We find that the virality is much more intense and concentrated within Twitter. 80% of all traffic is basically done after slighly more than one hour. At that time, only 60% of all likes have been activated in Facebook. One hour later (7 pm) 92% of all Twitter RT have been made, for 75% of all likes in Facebook.
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Impact for Bayern Munich Standards
In order to assess how big and relevant are the number presented in the previous section, we provide the comparison with the interaction received by tweets published by the official Twitter account @Bayern in ‘normal times’. So, we estimate the interaction received by @Bayern by every single tweet published since January 1, 2013.
Top tweets by impact (measured by number of retweets, RT) receive some 500 RT. Pep hiring anouncement received more than 10,000 RT in just 3 hours.
The tweet receiving more interest in Twitter before Pep got 463 RT. The average tweet published in @Bayern receives some 109 RT.
The tweet published in German announcing Pep Guardiola as new coch got more than 10,000 RT, and 9,000 the one in English. This is some 100 times more than the average tweet published in Bayern Munich official Twitter account.
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Impact for global football standards in the social media
It is evident that the announcement made in the official Twitter account is a milestone in recent Bayern Munich story. It is so al least in terms of media impact and social media impact.
Huge impact for Bayern, but how powerful is this impact within the context of the global brands in football? Those 12,000 RT reached are extraordinary number for Bayern Munich, but are they more ordinary ones for other top football brands? Consider that Bayern Munich counts with ‘just 100,000 followers in Twitter. Leading football references in Twitter are monsters by comparison. The combined five language accounts driven by FC Barcelona count with 14,8 followers. Real Madrid has 8 million followers. These two clubs from the Spanish Liga are the main references in Twitter, as the following team is Arsenal, with 2,1 million followers.
How many retweets are able to generate the tweets published in accounts counting with almost 150 times more followers? Clearly, this reference will help us to gauge the relevance and social media impact of the 12,000 RT reached by @Bayern.
We have monitored the RT and Fav received by each single tweet published in the following Twitter official accounts between January 1 2013 and January 16 2013: FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, and then the leading team in each one of the big five football countries in Europe: England, Italy, France (and Germany and Spain). The leading references are AC Milan, Arsenal, Bayern Munich and PSG.
The figure below presents the results concerning the top 10 tweets by number of RT+Fav received.
We find that the tweet announcing in German that Pep Guardiola will become new Bayern Munich coach is the top tweet by social media impact. The tweet published in English by @Bayern takes the third position.
The other tweets in the top 5 position come all from FC Barcelona Twitter accounts. They refer to the fourth FIFA Ballon d’Or won by Leo Messi.
There are tweets from Real Madrid and Arsenal among top 10 list. They all have more than 5,000 RT.
Tweet with the highest impact by AC Milan just reached 2,000 interactions. PSG top tweet gets some 1,250 interactions. Finally, top tweet by Bayern Munich before Pep Guardiola arrival is just 500 RT+Fav.
All these results tell us that football supporters all around the world perceive the decision taken by Pep Guardiola as one of the football moments of the year. Sport success in the crucial stages of the competition will generate tweets with higher impact that the ones we have captured since the beginning of year 2013, but our metrics suggest that Bayern Munich has entered into a new dimension as a brand by hiring Pep Guardiola.
Here the list of top 10 tweets between Jan1 and Jan 13 2013
1. FC Bayern
Perfekt!
PEP GUARDIOLA (41) ab Juli bis 2016 neuer Trainer des FC Bayern! /
Heynckes beendet zum Saisonende seine Karriere. ^M.Hörwick— FC Bayern München (@FCBayern) January 16, 2013
2. FC Barcelona
The winner of the FIFA Ballon d'Or is LEO MESSI! Congratulations, Leo! #PilotadOr— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) January 07, 2013
3. FC Bayern
Jupp #Heynckes will finish his successful career by the end of this season. Pep #Guardiola will take over as FC Bayern head coach in July.— FC Bayern München (@FCBayern) January 16, 2013
4. FC Barcelona
Leo Messi, con 25 años, es el primer jugador que gana 4 Balones de Oro en toda la historia del trofeo ow.ly/gBQvO#fcblive— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona_es) January 07, 2013
5. FC Barcelona
El premio FIFA Balón de Oro 2012 es para el jugador del FC Barcelona Leo Messi. ¡Enhorabona crack! #fcblive— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona_es) January 07, 2013
6. Real Madrid (Real Madrid – Celta 4-0, Copa del Rey)
2' GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL DE CRISTIANO RONALDO #realmadrid#halamadrid— Real Madrid C. F. (@realmadrid) January 09, 2013
7. FC Barcelona
Miroslav Stoch (Fenerbahçe) wins the FIFA Puskas award. #FCBLive— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) January 07, 2013
8. Real Madrid (Real Madrid – Celta 4-0, Copa del Rey)
We have just realeased the Football Media Value Report 2012, Season 2011/12.
This is the 7th edition of this annual report published by Media, Reputation and Intangibles, Universidad de Navarra.
You can visit our site at Economics, Sport and Intangibles unit, ESI Universidad de Navarra, where you can find information and free reports about football and media value and other sports (Olympics, Formula One, Tour de France).
Media value is estimated by the number of news received by each football player and teams during the whole season. We monitor media from countries in all continents.
According to our estimations, Argentinian star at FC Barcelona, Leo Messi, is again the football player who has received most media coverage during the season.
This is four times in a row as the leading football star in the world in terms of global media coverage. He has 28.8 points of media value. This means that Messi has appeared in news almost 29 times more than the average football players taking part in the Champions League this season.
Second most valuable player is Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid) with 20.7 points. Archrivals Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, FC Barcelona Vs Real Madrid have completely dominated the media scene during the season, as third player most talked in the news is far away. This is Didier Drogba (Chelsea) , with 12.4 points. Even if Drogba and his team did not perfom well during the regular season, Drogba has played a determinant role in allowing Chelsea FC winning the most prestigious and valuable trophy, the UEFA Champions League, for the first time ever in Chelsea’s history.
According to our results, there are no powerful emerging stars this season. There is only Van Persie (Arsenal) as a newcomer in the top 10 list. All other stars have been in the top 10 list in previous seasons.
We find as young emerging talent in the top 20 only Brazilian star Neymar (Santos) and Cavani (Naples).
If we compare top 10 players in season 2011/12 with 2010/11 results, as shown in the table below, we find that top two stars are the same, that both of them have increased their media value in this season thanks to their outstanding personal performance, and that the gap between Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo has increased. Wayne Rooney (Manchester United) has lost momentun, as he moves from third to fifth position, paying like this the price of the early elimination of his team in the Champions League.
Xavi (FCB), Iniesta (FCB) and Ibrahimovic (AC Milan) protect their position inside the top 10 club. By contrast, players losing this status are David Villa (FC Barcelona, long term injury), Fernando Torres (Chelsea, poor sport perfomance) and Samuel Eto’o (Anzhi, as he choosed to move to a club with very low media exposure, but with extraordinary salary conditions). Iker Casillas (Real Madrid) also skip from top 10 list, wich is a rather normal movement, because goalkeepers almost never receive strong media attention.
Being named the most powerful football player in the world in terms of media impact is not just a matter of pride and satisfaction for Leo Messi, for his club FC Barcelona and for Argentina. As news are like votes for sport talent and performance, becoming the number one during a whole season is an indirect way to say thay journalists all over the world consider that Leo Messi is the best player in the world right now.
In coherence with this hypothesis, we find that in the last four seasons, the football player identified by MRI Universidad de Navarra as the most valuable player eventualy was awarded later as the Ballon d’Or (now FIFA Ballon d’Or), the most prestigious individual award in football. If this is true this next season, our prediction is that Leo Messi will win his fourth Ballon d’Or in January 2013.
Concerning the ranking of top teams by media value, our results say that FC Barcelona is again the top football team in the world in terms of media value. FC Barcelona has 103 points fo media value. This is four consecutive seasons as world leader. Second most valuable team is Real Madrid, with 79.5 points. They repeat both the positions taken in the previous season.
Third team most valuable this season is Chelsea FC, with 63 points. They are one of the winners of the season, even if they performed poorly in local championship. They move from 6th to 3rd place. This shows the tremendous impact of reaching the final stages of the UEFA Champions League.
We have four teams from the Italian league, which is an increase from previous years. There are three treams from the English Premiership, two from the Spanish Liga and Bayern Munich, from German Bundesliga. Of course, Bayern as Champions League finalist is another of the winners of the season, as they move from 9th to 6th place.
Media exposure is the core factor in football and other professional sports influencing brand value. The business of sport entities is selling spectacle to fans. Media coverage is an excellent proxy for the size of the spectacle a sport brand is creating. In our previoys studies, we have found a direct relationship between media value and revenues.
Consider for instance the case of FC Barcelona. Thanks to an extraordinary generation of home grown players like Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol or Valdés, plus the role of sport manager Pep Guardiola, FC Barcelona has become a title winner team and has become the world media reference these last four seasons. Within this period of time, between 2008 and 2012, in the midst of a severe economic and financial crisis in Spain and abroad, total revenues have increased from 290 million euro in june 2007 to 461 million in june 2012. This is an increase of 58%. In the same period, Manchester United, which was the world media reference in 2008 but now has moved to 5th position, has increased revenues during the same period to just 18%.
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Update 30 October 2012: List of 23 candidates to Ballon d’Or 2013
The candidates
Keepers: Casillas, Neuer and Buffon
Defenders: Piqué and Ramos
Midfielders: Busquets, Iniesta, Xavi, Özil, Pirlo, Touré Yaya and Xabi Alonso
Forwards: Messi, Balotelli, Benzema, Agüero, Drogba, Falcao, Ibrahimovic, Neymar, Ronaldo, Rooney and Van Persie
You can gather information about each player at FIFA web site
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Seven players aong our top 10 list by media value are included in FIFA shortlist. FIFA does not include David Villa (long term injury), Samuel Eto’o (playing now in a team with no previous international competition records) and Fernando Torres.
Online betting firms have lauched bets concerning FIFA Ballon d’Or 2013 winner. We use odds proposed by Bwin.com in order to calculate the implicit winning chances given to 23 candidates. Bwin assigns 52.7% probabilities to win to Leo Messi, 23.6% to Cristiano Ronaldo and 23.6% to any other player.
The answer: January 7, 2013.
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Other analysis in this site about FIFA Ballon d’Or
May 19, 2012, the grand final of 2012 UEFA Champions League at Munich Allianz Arena, with local team Bayern Munich Vs Chelsea FC.
We show now media impact analysis before the final. We will include media coverage analysis after the final, in an update of this post.
Second part of this post is an analysis of the commercial implications of this final for Bayern and Chelsea, due to the strong relationship in professional football between media coverage and brand value.
Structure of this post:
Part 1. Expected stars of the final. Media Coverage analysis
Part 2. Champions league Economic Impact: media coverage, media and brand value, commercial power.
Part 3. And the winner is Chelsea FC. Photo Gallery
Appendix 1: Football tactics analysis, by Zonal Marking
Appendix 2. The big game for sponsors
Appendix 3. Twitter Impact Analysis, by ExactTarget
UEFA Champions League Final As a Crisis Event
This is the big event in football (soccer) of the year at clubs level. This is a defining moment for teams and players taking part of a game that caputers worldwide attention among football fans.
The winning title game in top sports is a crucial moment in sportive life for all people and institutions involved. In terms of business analysis, the outcome of the game has tremendous impact for the winning side. Brand equity of winners received a huge positive shock, that has normally lasting effects, especially for those with higher responsibilities and achievements in contributing to the final victory. In some particular cases, there is a before and after the final in the biography of players and teams.
This is why we analyze this king of sport events as a crisis in the story of players and clubs. We proposed in this blog this analysis of crucial games as a crisis context in our study about the impact in social media (Twitter) of the semifinals of this UEFA Champions League: Real Madrid vs Bayern Munich and FC Barcelona Vs Chelsea (you can see the cases by clicking the link).
Now we propose an analysis of the grand final. We want to present you results about some intangible issues: Who are the stars of this final? Who are the players that take the glory of the final?
As always in this post, we sustain our analysis in metrics. This time we use media coverage analysis in newspapers. We have used this technique profusely in this post. Media impact analysis in sports is the core approach and contribution proposed by our sport research team, Economics, Sport and Intangibles, ESI Universidad de Navarra.
The expected stars of the final. Chelsea FC and Bayern Munich Players. Media Impact Analysis
We come directly to the results. We show in the following figures the stars that media are expecting to appear in the grand final, in each team. This is measures by media coverage given to each player in news directly related to the the final Chelsea Vs Bayern Munich. It refers to monitoring of news from newspapers worldwide, covering more than 5,000 newspapers). First results refer to media appearance during the last month, since both teams qualified to the final by eliminating FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. Results of media impact are calculated as the share of all news about all team members that each single football players receive.
We start first with results concerning Chelsea FC players.
We find that the football star from FC Chelsea most talked about during the last month in relation with the final vs Bayern Munich is veteran John Terry. He captures 13.5% of all news. Even if Terry is a defender, he is a big star in the team, as he is ahome grown player and a team leader. The embarrassing result is that he will not play the final for sure, as he is suspended. He received a red card (explused from the pitch) after an unfair aggression against FC Barcelona rival Alexis. This misbehaviour, which was not even ‘needed’ for protecting Chelsea FC sport interests, as it did not correpond to a complicated defensive action. This action put in danger the qualifying options of his team. London club did eventually resist FC Barcelona ferocious attacks and eventually succeed in qualifyin to the final. Some called it the biggest sport miracle in Chelsea FC story.
So, we find that the main expected star in the Chelsea FC side is someone that will not even play the game. This result is again a clear reflect of the ‘crisis profile’ of big events: they create a tremendous media impact, for the good or for the bad.
Puting aside the case of the suspended bad boy terry, we find that first international media reference in Chelsea FC team is Didier Drogba. He receives 12.6% of all mentions. Almost tie in second place comes Fernando Torres, El Niño – The Kid, with a 12.1% share. Both strikers are the team references, as third place is at a huge distance in terms of emdia attention. This is david Cahill, with 8% share. He has received substantial media coverage due to the incertitude about his presence in the final due to injury problems. His participation is urgently needed, as Chelsea FC suffers from the absence of other defenders suspended. Chelsea FC has another three players suspended due to the accumulation of yellow cards (admonition with no direct expulsation from the game, except if you collect two yellow cards within a game). Suspended Ivanovic takes fifth place. This was a especially personal painful case: he received a yellow card implying suspension for the final game during semifinal against FC Barcelona. He was apparently unaware of his situation until he learned the consequences live in a post-game interview. Suspended Ramires and Meireles (red bars) receive also relevant media attention.
Turning now our attention to Bayern Munich stars to shine in the final, according to media impact analysis, we find that team reference is striker Mario Gómez. He receives 13.6% of all mentions to Bayern players. His degree os media attraction is almost exactly the same than the one reached by terry in the other side. The obvious difference is that the German player will play the game. He is the main hope for Bayern and the main source of concern for Chelsea coach and supporters. He has scored 12 goals in the current UEFA Champions League season. This is an all time record, if we exclude the mark obtained also this season by FC Barcelona mega star Lionel Messi, with 14 goals. Gómez can approach or equalize the record by the Argentinian star.
Second and third place go to Robben (12.3% share) and Frank Rybéri (11.9%). Both are team references and are crucial players in the football elaboration of Bayern Munich. It is well known that both have had some ego problems and disputes. Now the advantage is for Robben, but the differences are so thin that the impact of the final will fix their position in the team. We find in fourth position goalkeeper Manuel Neuer, with 10% of all news mentions. It is unusual to find goalkeepers sharing news protagonism with top midfielders and forwards. Neuer has earned his status of star to watch for the final as he played a decisive role in the semifinals Vs Real Madrid. Qualification was decided in the penalty round, as the game finished draw 2-1 (aggregate 3-3) after prolongation. He was able to block the shots by mega stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka.
Other relevant players for the final, according to media attention, are Schwensteiger (7,4%), Müller (7.0%), Boateng (5.6%) and Lahm (5.4%). Some of these players had a more relevant role at the beginning of the sseason, but injuries and average sport perfomance make that they are currently not expected as the key players in the final.
The Champions League final of the suspended players
There are as much as seven players that cannot play the final matrch due to suspension because of red card (John terry) or accumulation of yellow cards. This is probably a record number in the history of the UEFA Champions League finals.
These sport sanctions may affect the winning chances of each team, as if obliges the team sport managers to design new team strategies as some suspended players are regular team players.
We have seen that apparently the team suffering the most delicate absence is Chelsea FC, with the suspension of defender John Terry. This so important media attention may also be due to the fact that sanction is due to a red card action.
Summing up the weight of all players suspended in each team, we find that media consider that this loss is much more relevant for Chelsea FC camp. Suspended players generate 27% of all news abut the team, while Byaern Munich suspended players account only for 10% of all mentions.
Winning chances and media impact analysis
Both Chelsea and Bayern Munich beated in the semifinals the archfavorites for the final, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. Now in the final, which team is the favorite one to win the 2012 UEFA Champions League?
Bayern Munich counts with a very relevant circumstatial advantage: he benefits of playing the final at home. Normally finals are played in a neutral city. This time we have this benefit for Bayern Munich as a matter of chance, as Bayern Munich bid and was selected for hosting the final three years ago.
According to the leading football online betting firm, Bwin, Bayern Munich has almost exactly 65% of chances of winning the title. Remaining 35% go to Chelsea FC.
We show now which is the power of each team in terms of media coverage received globally by team members, in news related with the final, during the last four weeks. We find that Chelsea FC is leading the talk. Chelsea players receive 54% of all news and mentions about the final, against a 46% value for players from Bayern Munich.
Previous figure refers to global media impact of all players in the team roster of each team. This means that it include also news about suspended players. Even if they contribute to the overall media impact of the team, they will no contribute directly to win the title as they are banned for playing the final. We adjust the data in the following figure by including only news about players that can play the final match. In this case, we find that global media coverage is almost perfectly tied, with a sligh advantadge for Bayern Munich 51-49.
Media attention to team sport managers
Football players are the protagonists of the sport spectacle, and they receive all media attention. But technical leaders of the group are essential and may have a critical influence in the final outcome of the game. We have monitored media attention given to team sport managers. We have estimated the number of news as the share they represent to news received by all football players in theit team.
The tactical battle opposes Ruud Heynckes in Bayern Munich versus Roberto Di Matteo in Chelsea FC. Heynckes is a veteran coach with long experience and many sport sucessess as trainer. Di Matteo is a young trainer, he is in an interim position as coach, in replacement of former trainer Villas-Boas.
Very surprisingly to us, our empirical data tell us that during these four last weeks, media reference is by far Di Matteo. he receives an amount of news equivalent to 17.6% of all news received by all players in Chelsea team. Ruud Heynckes receives only 8.4%.
Views by Media in United Kingdom
Previous results were all about global media impact. In this section we show the results as they are perceived by media in United Kingdom. We will present how things about the final are presented in Britain in terms of quantitative media coverage. We will use global results as terms of comparison.
We find in the first figure that media in United Kingdom increase attention to the controversy and problems caused by red card received by John Terry. Media share in Britain increases to 20.9%, compared to global value of 13.5%. Cahill injury evolution receives more media attention in Britain than in general.
As for media coverage in Britain of rival players, we find that media in Britain is focused (obsessed?) by score killer Mario Gómez. Lahm and Schweingeister receive more attention than average.
Of course, local stars receive much more media attention by Bristh media than rival players from Bayern Munich. 71% of all news in United Kingdom about players in the final refer to Chelsea FC team players (excluding suspended players in both teams). Global rate was 49%.
Views by Media in Germany
Now we show the same analysis concerning media treatment given to Chelsea and Bayern Munich by newspapers in Germany.
We find that German newspapers do not pay any attention to Fernando Torreas, compared to global and British coverage. All media is focused in Drogba’s role in the final. He receives 17.5% of all news, compared to the global average of 12.6%.
As for media coverage of local team stars, we find, quite surprisingly, that mario Gómez deserves less media attention in Germany than abroad. (his shares drops from 13.6% to 11.8%. This benefits to Arjen Robben, who is currently the leading media reference in German newspapers, with a 15.4% share. German players (except Gómez) tend to receive a slighly higger media attention in Germany.
Finally, moving to the analysis of the media attention in Germany given to players from both participating teams, we have as expected the reverse result than found for British media. Now German newspapers reserve 65% of all news mentions to Bayern Munich players.
Champions League Final 2011: FC Barcelona Vs Manchester United, Messi Vs Rooney
We performed last year a similar analysis at ESI Universidad de Navarra concerning the media impact analysis of UEFA Champions League Final 2011 at Wembley, FC Barcelona Vs Manchester United.
We run a before the game analysis, similar to 2012 analysis. Last year we focussed our analysis in how media was giving coverage to leading mega star in each team: Wayne Rooney in Manchester United, Lionel Messi in FC Barcelona.
We scrutinized how media attention to these two rival stars was shared by media from different countries. This gave us a measure of the geographic brand power of top global brands in football.
You can find more information about this analysis in our Economics, Sport and Intangibles, Universidad de Navarra section. Below you have the figures concerning the courntries more oriented to Manchester United (Figure 1) vs the countries more oriented to FC Barcelona (Figure 2).
Figure 1
Figure 2
PART 2. CHAMPIONS LEAGUE ECONOMIC IMPACT: MEDIA COVERAGE, MEDIA AND BRAND VALUE, COMMERCIAL POWER
There is much at stake in this final game of the UEFA Champions League, as always. This title is one of the biggest annual sport events.
Two teams and a lot of football stars quest for sport glory. Winning team reaches a new status of prestige and sport excellence.
There are also a lot of commercial and economic conequences linked to this 90 (120) minutes game. The most evident are the direct ones, like the monetary prize that UEFA gives to the winner and the finalist. There are also additional revenues from broadcasting rights, controlled also by UEFA. Players will receive bonusses from team and sponsors depending on the result.
UEFA Champions League final, as a major sport event with global TV and media coverage, is also a definitive branding event. It create new brands, and it reinforce the brand equity of those already existing. Winners become stars, and players with a crucial role in the final become heroes.
New heroes are inmmensely attractive for firms as a branding strategy through sposnorship deals. New heroes create a new legion of followers from every corner of the world, ready to buy their team jerseys or other products, and avid to watch in the future their sport performance evolution.
We will present in this section the extraordinary role that the UEFA Champions League plays in creating global brands, and its direct translation into increased commercial power.
All results in this section come from our reports (freely available) produced by our research center Economics, Sport and Intangibles, Universidad de Navarra.
Stage 1: UEFA Champions League has a huge impact in team media value
We measure at ESI Universidad de Navarra what we call media value of football players and football teams since 2006. Media value is estimated by total media coverage in newspapers received by players and teams during a whole season, both in national and international newspapers. Media value is the core factor explaining revenue creation in professional sport.
We have shown that UEFA Champions League plays a major role in total media value received by players and teams. The impact becomes massive when team reach the semifinal stage of the competition. See for instance the results concerning season 2006/07
Source: Report Media Value and Football, Season 2006/07, June 2007, ESI Universidad de Navarra, p. 22 (see here)
We have shown in our analysis that seasonal media value is made almost entirely of sport performance. We have found out this strong connection in sports we have studied like Formula One, Cycling, Tennis and Football.
In the next figure, we represent the media value of top football teams by June 2007, and we have estimated an econometric model of which would be the fair level of media value based exclusively in sport performance. You can find close values between actual and estimated values. It is interesting to notice that sport performance measures included past 10 season results. Main factors are present season results. but there is also a legacy effect: past sport performance influence present media value. Among past performance factors the leading one were results reached in Champions League, while past domestic success were almost no relevant.
Source: Report Media Value and Football,Mid Season 2006/07, February 2007, ESI Universidad de Navarra, Chapter 5, pp. 21-28. (see here)
Stage 2. Relationship between media value and revenues
As media value is a global reflect of sport performance, it is also a reflect of the spectacle produced by each player and a team during a whole season. This is why we should expect a strong relationship between media value and income. We have designed several studies to analyse the relationship between media value and revenues at individual and club level, and we find always a strong positive relationship between both variables.
Next figure presents the revenues obtained by top players in terms of media value (data 2007). We divide them between top 10 and following top 11-20 football players. All top 20 players are top football global stars. We find that they receive more or lest the same income in salaries. But differences in revenues explode when we look at revenues coming from personal marketing and publicity contracts. Top 10 players receive in average some 9 million euros per year, while following stars in the list (11 to 20) receive ‘just’ 3.5 million euros per year. Reaching top positions in the media value race has huge consequences in commercial power of football mega stars.
Players
Source: Report Media Value and Football, Season 2006/07, June 2007, ESI Universidad de Navarra, p. 26 (see here)
We find a similar result when we turn to the analysis of the relationship between media value and revenues at football clubs level. There is a strong direct relationship both concerning TV rights and total revenues obtained by top football teams.
Source: Report Media Value and Football, Season 2009/10, June 2010, ESI Universidad de Navarra,Chapter 5, pp. 36-48 (see here, text in Spanish)
Source: Report Media Value and Football, Season 2009/10, June 2010, ESI Universidad de Navarra,Chapter 5, pp. 36-48 (see here, text in Spanish)
Stage 3. Top football players by media value, June 2011
Who are the current football mega stars by media value?
According to our last estimation, bu June 2011, the ranking is completely dominated by Lionel Messi (FC Barcelona). Second most valuable player is Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid). There were no football players from Bayern Munich or Chelsea FC among world top 10.
First place will be disputed again with all probability between Messi and CR7. But we expect to find more than one player from Champions final in the new list of season 2011/12, to be published by June 2012.
Stage 4. Top football teams by media value, June 2011
Finally, we present the current list (Juen 2011) of top football teams by media value.
Most valuable team is FC Barcelona, followed by Real Madrid. Chelsea FC appears 6th in the table. Bayern Munich take 9th possition. It it probable that winning team will finish between 3-5 position in the global ranking of season 2011/12.
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PART 3: AND THE WINNER IS CHELSEA FC
Chelsea FC is the new UEFA Champions League 2012 winner. Drogba scored the definitive penalty, after Schwensteiger missed his shot. Didier Drogba was also the scorer in the regular time, saving Chelsea with his equalization in minute 86, near the end of the game. Müller gave an advance to Bayern Munich in minute 83.
This combination will probably make Didier Drogba become the media reference to global media coverage of the game. We will monitor it to identify the role given to all players and coaches by the media attention given to them.
Schwensteiger desperate after missing his penalty shot.
Photo gallery of the Champions League Final 2012 Bayern Munich Vs Chelsea FC
Lampard and Schwensteiger (BM)
Didier Drogba (CFC) in defensive tasks
David Luiz defending position against Mario Gómez (BM)
Bosingwa Vs Ribéry (BM)
Mario Gómez (BM) and Gary Cahill
Müller (BM) scores against Cech, minute 83: Bayern – Chelsea 1-0
Manuel Neuer, unable to avoid goal by Didier Drogba (1-1), minute 86.
Robben missing his penalty shot in prolongations (1-1), minute 96.
Appendix 1: Football tactics analysis, by Zonal Marking
You can check here the great and always interesting pre-game tactics analysis provided by zonalmarking.net.
(…) Perhaps there’s a wider context here. Real Madrid beat Barcelona to La Liga, with transition-based play overcoming tiki-taka. Dortmund’s victory over Bayern was something similar, as was Atletico’s win over Athletic in the Europa League final. Such results are hardly indicative of a seismic shift, but a win for Chelsea would be yet another victory for reactive football.
According to Zonalmarking, a defensive strategy like Mourinho Inter Vs Bayern 2010 or a Di Matteo Barcelona Vs Chelsea 2012 will pay for Chelsea purposes.
Jose Mourinho’s side played extremely defensively in the final two years ago, essentially continuing the strategy they’d used at the Nou Camp a few weeks earlier, despite the fact they were playing a much more attacking game in Serie A at the time. Will Chelsea do the same?
Broadly the same approach makes sense. No-one plays quite like Barcelona, but in terms of ball retention, Bayern are the closest thing. Barca lead the way in terms of average possession and pass completion rate across Europe’s major five leagues, but Bayern are second in both categories. Though they’ve always been a side with fine passers, they’ve become even more about retention since the final two years ago – then, they mixed possession play with direct play down the flanks from Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben. Those two are still in the side, of course, but tend to find themselves trying to break down packed, deep defences more frequently.
In a 0-0 context, Zonalmarking expects a game controlled by Bayern Munch in terms of ball possession.
There isn’t too much to say here. This is highly unlikely to be a possession battle – Bayern will dominate the ball, while Chelsea will focus upon organisation and counter-attacking quickly down the flanks. It’s difficult to see that Chelsea would be any better off by attempting to dominate the play. Around 60-65% Bayern possession is probable while the game is 0-0.
Bayern Munich key factors:
Chelsea defensive line. Chelsea could defend deep and narrow against Barcelona because Barcelona don’t have a natural number nine, nor do they like putting crosses into the box from wide positions. But this situation is different – first, Bayern do have a number nine in Mario Gomez. In combination with Chelsea missing both Terry and Ivanovic, his aerial power could be crucial and therefore Chelsea can’t drop too deep.
Second, Bayern have proper wingers on either side who will take advantage of being able to get up to full speed before taking on the full-backs. The caveat, of course, is that both Ribery and Robben play as inverted wingers and naturally want to come inside onto their stronger foot. Therefore, Chelsea will want to show them down the line, but not so much that they have time to cross – as both can do so, even with their weaker foot. It’s a complex equation for what should be a very simple problem – the basic conclusion is that Chelsea’s full-backs need to play well.
Chelsea key factors:
Chelsea transitions. This is absolutely key. Di Matteo will have studied Dortmund’s 5-2 German Cup final victory over Bayern last weekend, and noted how efficient and dangerous they were on the break. The formula was simple – Dortmund’s attacking midfielder Shinji Kagawa make himself available for the out-ball, then the Dortmund wingers Kevin Grosskreutz and Jakub Blaszczykowski immediately sped past the Bayern full-backs, taking advantage of a moment’s hesistation from Lahm and Alaba when Bayern lost the ball. Quickly, 3 v 2 and 4 v 3 situations emerged on the break.
The absence of Ramires is a huge blow in this respect, but Malouda and Kalou have the discipline and energy required to form a second bank of four, then burst towards goal. But it’s important that Chelsea have a clear line of service to them – Lampard has been brilliant playing balls out to Ramires from deep in recent weeks and will need to do the same here, and if Mata plays as the number ten, he has to be intelligent with his movement like Kagawa was, moving deep into the channels and finding space, then laying the ball off quickly for the wingers speeding past him.
Appendix 2. The big game for sponsors
Not only Bayern and Chelsea are in front of a decissive game in May 19, 2012. Sponsors also play an can win a lot, or not.
This will be a Adidas final, as the German firm is sportwear sponsor of both Bayern Munich and Chelsea FC. Last year there was a Nike final, with sponsored teams FC Barcelona and Manchester United.
These are the ad weapons used by Adidas to activate the sponsorship and increase brand awareness.
adidas Fußball – UEFA Champions League Finals: go all in for your team! Day 1!
adidas Fußball – UEFA Champions League Finals: go all in for your team! Day 2!
adidas Fußball – UEFA Champions League Finals: go all in for your team! Day 3!
Many readers know now that Nike has launched an astonishing ad as powerful marketing reaction. This is a move very similar to ambush marketing, as Nike has deployed all means (mainly in Twitter with promoted top Tweets and TT hasthtag) to completely control social media conversation, just the day before the grand Adidas final. You can watch here the three minutes Youtube video that is getting extraordinary viral diffusion and an overwelming positive acceptance among football fans. Of course, not surprisingly, the video includes some Nike stars playing in the final, like Frank Ribéry who even appears as the cover caption of the video (wearing a Nike France team jersey).
Appendix 3: Measuring the Twitter impact of Chelsea winning the Champions 2012
Exact Target Social Media Lab has monitored the Twitter impact of Chelsea winning the Champions League 2012.
This is our fourth post in the series about football (soccer) and measuring behaviour of supporters using social media analysis, with Twitter content analysis.
Like in the previous two posts of this blog, we will provide some measures about perception bias of football club supporters, using the information published in Twitter.
We analyzed first the case of the Spanish Clasico FC Barcelona Vs Real Madrid, showing who were the most relevant stars of the match in global Twitter audience. We found also that the majority of people in Twitter worldwide expected a local win (60% of all predictions). Real Madrid actually won 1-2, a victory expected only by 22% of all twitter users.
We also presented a couple of days ago the results concerning the predicting behavior about the match FC Barcelona Vs Chelsea. We studied in that case how biased the expected sport success is biased by Twitter users living in the directly affected cities, Barcelona and London. Passion provoking biased personal perception of team supporters is a largely expected and almost self evident result. But the interesting thing is to use Twitter driven knowledge to assess the extent of the bias in each supporters camp. This provides information about which team supporters are more confident with their team success and which supporters are more distanced from actual winning probabilities measured by external sources (on-line professional betting firms).
We perform again the same analysis applied to the second semifinal, Real Madrid Vs Bayern Munich. This time we add an additional analysis: which are the predictions from rival team supporters?
First result refers to predictions made by Twitter users in Madrid city. We find as expected a massive confidence in Real Madrid sport performance, as 91% people expect that Real Madrid will beat Bayern Munich. Real Madrid lost the first leg match in Germany, 2-1. This means that in some cases, even if Real Madrid wins at home, it requires winning by a 1-0 or by a more than one goal of difference. We find that there are some 9% of bettors that expect Real Madrid winning but Bayern Munich going to the final. This means that 82% people in Madrid expects that Real Madrid will reach the final game versus Chelsea FC. Optimism and confidence is strong, but it is slightly lower than positive expectation showed by people from Barcelona about FC Barcelona success (89%), that did not actually happen.
There are only 3% of people publishing tweets in Madrid expecting even that local team will lose the match at home. Living in Madrid does not mean necessarily being a Real Madrid supporter. There are a fraction of people in Madrid supporting rival clubs, like Atlético de Madrid or even FC Barcelona.
Now, the analysis concerning the expected results by Bayern Munich supporters. Surprisingly for us, we found a very limited number of Twitter predictions emerging from the city of Munich in Germany, that made the results not representative. We have been forced to analyse all game forecasts made by all football supporters in Germany to gather a relevant number of predictions.
The limited amount of predictions about Real Madrid – Bayern Munich game in comparison to predictions in Madrid, Barcelona and London may arise from different reasons. The most important one is that this result is telling us that Twitter has a smaller penetration rate among internet users in Germany than in Spain and Britain. Another explanation is that people in Germany feel less appealing in making personal forecast about football results, while this is a tradition in Spain (‘porras’) and in Britain (well known sport betting culture). Third explanation may be that people in Munich are less interested than people in Madrid with football and with this game; but knowing the massive popularity of football in Germany, this cause would be weak at most.
Again, as expected, predictions coming from Germany are much more positive about the chances for Bayern Munich eliminating Real Madrid. 73% people expect that Bayern Munich will be able to go to the final, at home, as it will be played in the Allianz Arena, in Munich. Among them, 55% even expect that Bayern will be able to beat Real Madrid away, while another 18% feel that Bayern Munich will lose the game, but the advance got in Munich will be enough to create an advantage in aggregate result. Some 27% fear that Real Madrid will win and eliminate Bayern Munich. Remember that these are predictions from all Germany, and they can come from people strongly disliking Bayern Munich or have Real Madrid as preferred team.
Combining both results, we have that people from Madrid are more confident than people from Germany about the sport success of their local team.
The announced third element of this post is to show views coming from Barcelona city. Some of you familiar with football (soccer) may now that Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are arch-rivals teams. Rivalry is not closed to local national competition, the Spanish Liga. Both teams have been tremendously successful in international competitions. For many supporters, an international success of the rival team is seen as harming for its own interests and pride. Many (not all) supporters in both camps strongly wish that the rival team is eliminated by a non Spanish team. See for instance the public statement by former president of FC Barcelona Joan Gaspart: ”I could not care less about the game between Madrid and Bayern. I don’t care if they are a Spanish team. I am anti-Madridista” (Goal.com 25 April 2012)
Using Twitter content analysis we can appreciate how this rivalry influences predictions about sport performance. We have monitored predictions about Real Madrid Vs Bayern Munich game published by people in Barcelona. This case is specially sensitive and interesting in the present framework, as FC Barcelona was eliminated the day before Real Madrid is fighting for reaching the final game. After FC Barcelona failure, as it usually happens, some Real Madrid fans shown their happiness for Barcelona elimination. This reaction may in return influence predictions from FC Barcelona supporters about Real Madrid chances.
We find that just 50% people in Barcelona expect that Real Madrid will reach the final against Chelsea. This is much lower than sentiment in Madrid (82%), but higher than what supporters expect in Germany. Of course, this result is not intended to be considered as something representative about sentiments of all people in Barcelona. It just shows manifested preferences from a very small non representative share of people, as we have explained in a previous post. But even if not representative, they are revealing, and they show that rivalry strongly affects and bias personal perception about sport performance. The results reflect probably more a wish than a actual inner perception about the expected match result.
What about actual qualifying probabilities of each team?
Like in the previous post, we look at estimations established by the leading professional on-line betting firm, Bwin.com. Based in the odds offered to bettors, the gambling company estimates that Real Madrid is favorite to go to the final, with 62% of probabilities. Bayern Munich is assigned with 38% of probabilities of success.
This means that over optimism is each camp is of 20 points in Madrid, and 35 points in Germany. Predictions made by people in Barcelona are more positive than the actual ones concerning the chances of Bayern Munich to go to the final (prediction of 50% Vs actual probability of 38%).
Update: Bayern Munich goes to the grand final, playing at home against Chelsea FC.
About Media Impact and Sport:
See our studies about measuring media impact and media value in football and other sports in our site, Economics, Sport and Intangibles, Universidad de Navarra
Also, other posts about sport and media analysis in this blog:
Bayern Munich (Germany) played against Real Madrid (Spain) the first leg of the two games semifinals of the 2012 UEFA Champions League in the Allianz Arena, Munich, the 17 April 2012.
Bayern Munich won the match 2-1 scoring the winning goal in the last minute. The goal was scored by Mario Gomez, receiving a ball centered by teammate Lahm. This advance may be decissive for classifying for the grand final or at least offers more chances to Bayern Munich. Lahm succeeded in doing this pass after overcoming the Real Madrid defender Fabio Coentrao. Many people considered this move as a big defensive mistake by Postuguese Coentrao. His game performance was considered very poor as he commited other mistakes.
For readers not familiar with European football, you have a couple of pictures from the game. In the first photo, Fabio Coentrao (right) defending a ball against Ribery (left)
Journalists identified Coentrao as main responsible for Real Madrid losing the game. Real Madrid coach José Mourinho made a strong defense of Coentrao’s commitment and performance in the match, in the press conference after the match.
Answering to a journalist about Coentrao’s mistake in the crucial last action, Mourinho responds:
‘Estoy lejos, pero no me gusta la pregunta porque hay mucha gente que ha cometido errores durante el partido. Coentrao ha hecho un buen partido, ha tenido una tarea difícil y ha cumplido’
(I don’t like this question, because there are many other players that made mistakes during the game. Coentrao had a good performance in the pitch; he had ahard task and he did it).
Journalists and aficionados did not share the positive analysis by José Mourinho and evaluated Fabio Coentrao performance in a very negative way. We have for instance the rating provided by both journalists and readers from leading sport daily in Spain, Marca. This is a newspaper published in Madrid. It has a national reach, but it uses to be the preferred newspaper by Real Madrid followers, altogether with AS, as it provides an extensive and supportive coverage to Real Madrid. In a scale 1 to 10, journalists give 1 point to Coentrao (the following player in low rating is Marcelo, with 4 points). These extremely negative views are shared by readers. They rate Coentrao performance with 2.2 points. The results correspond to 25,000 votes. (Encuestra Bayern Munich – Real Madrid, Marca)
We show the results from a second source. They come from newspaper El Mundo, one of the leading newspapers in Spain. This is again the ratings given by the readers in on-line edition. This is a scale 0 to 10. We find that the main score given is 0 points, in one third of some 2,900 votes. Average rating of all votes is again 2.2 points. Rating given by journalists at El Mundo was this time 4 points. (Encuesta Valoración Real Madrid, El Mundo)
Almost all people agree that Fabio Coentrao offered a poor performance in a crucial game. Critics are amplified because the global performance of this player for all season was under discussion and scrutiny already before the game. Coentrao suffers from the fact that he was hired at the beginning of this season after Real Madrid paid an stounding sum as transfer fee for a defender: 30 million euros (some 38 million US$).
We will not discuss in this post about football or about reputation and media crisis linked to football players. We wanted to show another example of the knowledge that it can be gathered from capturing sentiments in the social media, using adequate framework of analysis.
We do not pretend -at all- to present these results as a kind of scientific survey about opinions and sentiments. The results we provide in this post are not representative. They are not representative as Twitter community is not a fully representative sample of global Spanish society and opinion in Spain. Twitter community is biased as it corresponds to not representative sample of age, education and maybe ideology. Results are not representative because active Twitter users share specific characteristics. Results are not representative as Twitter users participating actively in Trending Topic issues present different characteristics and interests than average Twitter community. For instance, I am an active twitter user for professionaly oriented topics, and I normally do not contribute in TT issues. Results are not representative because the dynamics of Trendic Topics may affect strongly the ‘bad examples’ chosen as references: leading tweets specially funny that receive a substantial amount of RT tend to appear in main Twitter page. Like this, they exert an influence on other people willing to writte new tweets, and are often reused with the introduction of some variations, or simply by copying them. Results are not representative because they rely in a rather limited number of tweets.
We are quite aware that our results are not representative. But we also consider that our results are illustrative, and that they provide relevant insights revealing positive or negative reputation and image of personalities and institutions. Results also show light about the problems currently indentified as such, identify hot topics in the social media and provide an indirect measure of relevance of brands.
A Twitter Trending Topic as means to reveal brands with negative reputation
The interesting point is that, as in many other cases, a lot of issues related with the Bayern Munich – Real Madrid Game became trending topics (TT) in Twitter in Spain (and probably elsewere). Coentrao emerged as one of the recurrent issues in the Twitter after game. Late in the night someone created a specific hashtag (HT), #SiLoComparasConCoentrao; ‘si lo comparas con Coentrao’ (If you compare it/her/him with Coentrao…). So, the poor sport performance as perceived by many people in Twitter (and of course, by rivals of Real madrid) was translated into one of the typical satiric and spoof oriented HT, using Coentrao as essence of something really bad. The terms of comparison were other bad things, situations or persons, that in the tweets became almost good in comparison to Fabio Coentrao.
Our strategy consisted in identifying which where the ‘bad, but no as bad as Coentrao’ people, institutions or situations that Twitter users picked as epytome of bad, ugly, or poorly performing. Publishing tweets in TT dynamic spoof HT has its own rules, as people want to share funny short text with other people in order to contribute in creating momentum in the TT debate, one of the essences of microblogging. Some people are looking for others’ reward in terms of winning retweets (RT). Some other take advantadge of TT debate for sending their own political/social views, acting as social media influencers.
The selection of the specific figure opposed to Coentrao is a way to reveal us some information about the social media reputation of politicians, celebrities, corporations and brands, or institutions. We present in this post some of the results that we have reached monitoring #SiLoComparasConCoentrao.
Dictators
We open our analysis by checking which are the references identified as real evil, by the citation to dictators. Our results in the figure show that the epytome of evil is Hitler, as he concentrates some 80% of all mentions to dictators, with 219 tweets. This also means that Twitter community in Spain considers that this dictator can be used for jokes in some contexts. Second in the list is Spanish Francisco Franco, with 33 mentions. Third is Bin Laden, with 26. Other dictators monitored receive limited social media attention. Running a soft socio-political analysis, we find that the local dictator Francisco Franco, who was the Head of State between 1939-1975 is considered by many as the best representation of evil in politics, but right now, 37 years after his death, he is not the top-of-mind brand for the majority of people, as this infamous ‘honor’ goes to Adolf Hitler.
Politics and Economic Problems in Spain
The second set of cases we analyse using Coentrao’s mocking hashtag is linked to politics and references to economic problems in Spain.
We show first results concerning politicians and political parties in Spain.
We find that current Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, is the leading reference in this section, with 161 tweets. Second in importance is his predecessor, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, with 99 appearances. In both cases, they appear as example in Coentrao HT of bad Government. When explaining why, tweets about Rajoy refer mainly to the severity of budget cuts, while tweets about Zapatero accuse him of lack of leadership and responsibilty for not addressing the present economic problems that Spain is suffering.
Former Prime Ministers play a minor role. José María Aznar, who is normally attacked by leftist oriented people due to his conservative government and to his support to George Bush in Iraq war, receives just 6 mentions. Socialist long standing Prime Minister Felipe González appears just once. Twitter joke tweets are strongly stick to ongoing events, and concentrate ‘attacks’ to politicians with ongoing public responsibilities. We find also that Rajoy, more than his Government attract users’ reaction, as direct mentions to ‘Government’ are just 63. We have also checked the presence of tweets about individual Ministers of Mariano Rajoy government. All of them generate just 20 tweets, and ‘accused’ ministers are Ana Mato (Health) and José Ignacio Wert (Education and Culture).
Mentions to individual political parties are limited in comparison to references to present and prior Prime Ministers. References to governing conservative party PP are 41, or four times less than references to Rajoy. References to socialist party PSOE, the leading party in the parliamentary oppostion are 8. There are almost no references to other parties (one reference to IU, a confederatio of leftists parties including communist party PCE.
We move now to the analysis of problems directly related to Spain that are chosen by TT microbloggers as bad events deserving to be compared to Coentrao performance.
Direct references to Spain as suffering problems count 348 tweets. They include a wide array of problems. Comparing to previous figures, explicit references to problems Spain are higher than any other issue. We have monitores the presence of specific problems. Main individual reference is to ‘crisis0, with 194 mentions. If we look into specifi problems, we find that people identify unemployment as main evil, with 114 mentions. Remember that spain is facing right now an unemployment rate of 23% active labor force, the highest in Europe, above rescued countries like Greece and Portugal. As a way to evaluate the extent of the ongoing crisis, consider that unemployment rate bottomed to 8.1% in year 2006 (source: Indexmundi). Second individual problem most widely mentioned are the cuts in public expenditures approved by the current Government in order to reduce drastically the current deficits and meet international commitments. By comparison, direct mentions to harf due to increased taxes appear in mere four tweets. As for public policies, we find that health and education problems due to recently announced new cuts appear 50 times, half the size of mentions to cuts and to unemployment.
Politics and politicians as main evil in Spain appear in a non negligeable way, with 40 mentions. By contrats, there is a relative low presence of mentions to corruption (11 tweets).
Problems linked to deficit financing and risks of mention play a marginal role in spoofs using Coentrao HT.
Finally, we observe a strong presence of a very recent problem created for the Spanish economy: the expropriation of YPF from Spanish oil company Repsol, by the Government of Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. It receives 153 mentions as epitome of a bad thing for Spain. This is more social media attention than references to unemployment. Of course, this result is affected by the effect of the recent annoucement, as social media debates are very sensitive in the short term.
Spanish Royal Family
The Royal Family in Spain is being battered since 2011 by an incredible amount of problems highly sensitive to public opinion. They are dramatically influencing the state of public opinion about the role of King Juan Carlos, the Royal family and eventually the role of monarchy in Spain.
Very recent events have created strong negative reaction and has fuelled social media debate, discussion, attacks and mockery. Iñaki Urdangarín, married with Infanta Cristina, a daughter of King Juan Carlos is under current investigation fro allegation of corruption in business affairs. Just a week ago Felipe Juan Froilán, the son of Infanta Elena, was injured by a bullet in his feet while manipulating a shotgun. The problem in term of reputation was that he is 13 years old and such hunting arms are prohibited to younger than 14 years old. Finally, last 14 April 2012, news announced that King Juan Carlos broke his hip, during a private trip in Botswana. Son later people learnt that the King was participating in a safari hunt chassing elephants. Nor the trip neither the goal of the trip was publicly announced before the incident happened. This fact provoked an extraordinary reaction in social media channels, as many people considered outrageous such a luxurious occupation while the spanish economy is shrinking, unemployment rate are at all time highs and ordinary people is affected by aggressive cuts in public expenditures. Other consider intolerable the killing of elephants.
So, the monarchy is experiencing right now probably the most critical situation never experienced in Spain in terms of reputation, prestige and social acceptance. We show now how this context has been translated into the debate and spoofs around the hasgtag #SiLoComparasConCoentrao.
Our results suggest that debate and anger about ongoing issues in relation with the Spanish Royal family are serious. We find some 640 mentions to King Juan Carlos as someone as bad or worse than Coentrao football perfomance. Comparing this value with all previously shown shows that the current crisis of the monarchy is strongly felt by the social media community.
Some tweets about the King show anger, but many other are just jokes and mockery. In any case, it is clear that it is not good for the health and reputation of the monarchy as institution to become the preferred source of mockery and spoof.
Second member of the royal family most mentionned is Froilán, with 381 tweets. Of course the profile of tweets about Froilán are mainly oriented to jokes about the accident, and not negative tweets considering the kid as an evil example.
Iñaki Urdangarín comes just fourth, with 35 tweets. The fact that Urdangarín case was during the previous months the reputation nightmare for the Spanish royal family and despite that it receives some 20 times less social media attention than King Juan Carlos. This is a measure of how sensitive is the elephant hunting case in the social media arena, and how relevant it is for monarchy reputation in Spain.
